Strabo (born 63 BC or 64
BC, died ca. 24 AD), a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher
is mostly famous for his Geographika ("Geography")

He says: "Poseidonius conjectures that the names of these
nations also are akin; for, says he, the people whom we call
Syrians are by the Syrians themselves called
Arameans."

(From: The
Geography of Strabo, translated by Horace Leonard Jones and
published in Vol. I of the Loeb Classical Library edition, 1917,
Book I, Chapt. 2, 34)

(Photo: http://www.ccel.org)

Flavius Josephus (c. 37 – c. 100 AD (or
CE)) was a 1st century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and
royal ancestry who survived and recorded the Destruction of Jerusalem in 70
and later settled in Rome. He says: ""Aram
had the Arameans, which the Greeks called Syrians.""

(From:
Antiquities of the Jews, translated by William Whiston in 1737, Book I,
Chapt. 6)

Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 275 – May 30,
339), was a bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and is often referred to as the
father of church history because of his work in recording the history of the
early Christian church. He says: ""and
from Aram the Arameans, which are also called
Syrians"

Abu
Al-husayn 'ali Ibn Al-husayn Al-mas'udi, born 895 in Baghdad [Iraq] and died
957 in al- Fustat [Egypt], was a historian and traveler, known as "the
Herodotus of the Arabs.” He was the first Arab to combine history and
scientific geography in a large-scale work. On Tur Abdin he says: "Tur
Abdin is the mountain where remnants of the Aramean
Syrians still survive."

Prof. Dietrich Hermann Hegewisch born Dec.
15, 1746 in Quakenbrück [Germany] and died April 4, 1812 in Kiel, was a
prolific german historian at the University of Kiel with a wide span of
interests. He says: "Do
not the Syrians, as they are usually called, or the
Arameans, as they in fact are termed, deserve more attention in
world history than they are usually given?"

On Page 197 he says: "The names
Syria, Assyria, Mesopotamia, Babylon, etc. stem from the Greeks,
who were not familiar with the true geography
of these lands when the names first started to be used. Later, partly
because of continuing ignorance and partly because of
convenience despite having accurate knowledge, they persisted in
using them since it would have required something of an effort to give up
the old, familiar names and divisions of the countries and switch to the new
ones, even if they were more accurate. The old,
true, and single name of these lands is Aram; it is mentioned
numerous times in the Bible of the Old Testament, and Greek scholars were
also familiar with it and probably described the population of these areas
as Arameans, though seldom, as they usually continued
to use the term Syrian, which had been familiar to the Greeks."

On page 307 he says:
"The Syrians or Arameans were not merely
a numerous and large people, they were also a
much cultivated people."

(Photo: http://portrait.kaar.at)

Prof. Theodor Mommsen born Nov. 30, 1817,
Garding, Schleswig [now in Germany] died Nov. 1, 1903, Charlottenburg, near
Berlin, was a German historian and writer, famous for his masterpiece about
the History of Rome. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902. He
says:
"the history of the Aramaean or Syrian nation
which occupied the east coast and extended into the interior of Asia as far
as the Euphrates and Tigris"

(From: The
History of Rome, written between 1854 and 1856, Leipzig, by Theodor Mommsen,
Book First, Chapter One)

"the Arameans defended their nationality with the
weapons of intellect as well as with their blood against all the allurements of Greek civilization
and all the coercive measures of eastern and
western despots, and that with an obstinacy which no Indo-
Germanic people has ever equalled, and which to us who are Occidentals seems
to be sometimes more, sometimes less, than human."

(ibid,
Book Third, Chapter One)

(Photo:
wikipedia.org)

Prof. Theodor Nöldeke born March 2, 1836 in
Harburg near Hamburg, died December 25, 1930 in Karlsruhe, was the leading
german semitic scholar, who studied at Göttingen, Vienna, Leiden and Berlin.
He says:
"The main body of the population of all these wide landscapes from the
Mediterranean Sea to beyond the Tigris belonged to
a certain nationality, that of the Arameans."

On page 461 he says:
"It is well understandable that people have started to transfer the name of
the country to the most important nationality and so
the name 'syrian' was apprehended ethnological and was equated with 'aramaic'."

On page 468 he says:
"Since the times of Alexander [the Great], if not already somewhat earlier,
people have started to transfer the name of the
Syrians exclusively over the prevailing in Syria nationality, and in
this way this originally political-geographical term became an ethnological one that was identified with the local
Arameans."

"From the time the Greeks came to have a more intimate acquaintance with
Asia, they designated by the name of Syrians, the
people who called themselves ´Arameans’.”
(From: Th. Nöldeke, Kurzgefasste Syrische Grammatik (Leipzig, 1880), p.
XXIX)

"Regarding
the name of this nation and its language is the original 'Aramean’ in essence also the only one [sic], that for the employment of the
present-day scholarship as yet strongly fits.”
(From: Th. Nöldeke, "Die Namen der aramäischen Nation und Sprache,” in
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 25 (1871), p. 131)

(Photo:
www.doaks.org)

Karl Eduard Sachau born 20 July 1845 and
died 1930 was a German orientalist. He was 1872 professor at the University
of Vienna, and in 1876, professor at the University of Berlin, where he was
appointed director of the new Seminar of Oriental languages in 1887. He is
especially noteworthy for his work on Syriac and other Aramaic dialects. He
says: "The nation of the Arameans: This
national name later, mainly in consequence of Jewish-Christian literature
influences, gave way to the Greek designation
Syrians."

The article below, written by
professor Dr. John Joseph was published in
JAAS in 1997 as response to a article by professor Richard Frye
published in the Journal of Near
Eastern Studies (http://www.jstor.org/pss/545826)
in 1992 entitled “Assyria and Syria: Synonymy”.

John Joseph was a professor at
Franklin & Marshall College from 1961-1988.A former
student of Joseph, Andrew J. Schindler, made a donation to Franklin &
Marshall College for building of JOSEPH Internationale Study Center.

Regarding John Joseph Centre we read on the
website of
Franklin & Marshall College: The Joseph
International Center was built in 2006, and named in honor of John Joseph
Ph.D. '50, inspired by the gratitude of his former student and building
donor, Andrew J. Schindler '72. Dr. Joseph, a native of Iraq, is a Lewis
Audenreid Professor Emeritus of History

The apostate Arameans who in our
days identify themselves with the former “Assyrians” of antiquity, a
term invented by the Western spiritual colonial activities in the
Middle-east in the 19th century, try by all means possible to
force this fake name onto the Aramean nation.
To achieve this they even
made a monstrous covenant with the PKK and engaged in the path of
terrorism to promote this unholy lie-name.

The “Lost A” theory.

The article in question deals
with the theory which became known as the “lost A” theory. This theory
sounds like this: the word “Syria” is abbreviation of “Assyria”. This
abbreviation became into being, we are told, because the Greek alphabet
does not contain a character which in English by approach sounds like “Sh”.
In Turkish is this letter “Ş”, the corresponding sound in Aramaic would
be the character Shin (ܫ
letter 21) (In Aramaic however, Ashur is not spoken as “Sh” but as Athur,
“th”).

Because according to this theory
the Greeks could not speak out “Assyrians” owing the aforementioned
character in their alphabet, they omitted the letter “A” and finally the
name “Assyrians” was abbreviated to “Syrioi/Syrians”.

What is consequence of this?
Well, the fallen Arameans who call themselves “Assyrians” have exalted
this theory to a god. Because by means of this theory you can
“Assyrianize” all the Arameans. What you do is just to put back the
preposition – A (the “lost” character) and you mould everything to your
will. Thus: before “Syrians” you put back the “lost” A and you get
“Assyrians”, before Syriac you put back the lost “A” and you get
“Assyriac” etc.. etc..

And this is exactly the reason
that some of these terrorists have nestled themselves within the church
councils and other organs of our nation and fool the people by screaming
from the housetops saying “We are Syrians (Suryoye)”.

Not everybody of course agrees
with this theory. Here below we will explain to you in few points the
problems around this theory. This theory is invented by outsiders who
were unaware of the Aramean Hidden Pearls and had also no access to
the ancient Aramean historical writings. These writings are decisive as
to the origin of our nation and certainly not the view of outsiders. Few
remarks will be dropped about this matter:

1.
The Aramean recorded history.

Every nation has its own
historians/ elders/ scholars /wise men who either by oral traditions/
narrations/ customs/ prayers, or in written form have recorded some
historical traces about the people in question. If you want to learn
something about the identity of a people, you first should try make yourself
known with the cultural backgrounds of such nations by learning their
language to get access to the written sources or oral
statements/traditions/customs passed on from generation to generation.

In case of Aramean nation, there
is plenty of sources available in the Aramean writings on the origin of
our nation. Everybody who studied Aramaic, will have access to this
writings, and understands immediately that our nation is Aramean and
nothing else. It also becomes clear that the synonymy Arameans/Syrians
are interchangeable and have certainly nothing to do with the word
“Assyrians”. Another important point, neglected by the advocates of the
“lost” – A theory, is that in Aramaic and Hebrew the words “Assyrians”
and “Syrians” always as two distinct words with different meanings are
mentioned and never as synonymy.

As noted before, the theory
“Syrians/Assyrians” is introduced by those who had no access to the
Aramaic sources and here starts the problem. A outsider shows up with a
theory concerning the origin of our nation without having studied the
nation itself. That is impossible.

The apostate Arameans who call
themselves “Assyrians” deliberately misinterpret some statements /quotes
of the church fathers without willing to understand the reason behind
certain statements. Here below we will explain what we mean:

In the Aramaic literature the
city of Mosul is called “Othur”, that is to say “Assur”.
Someone coming from Mosul is therefore not called “Mosulian”, but a “Othuroyo”,
that is to say “Assyrian”. This is well-known fact in the Aramaic
writings and everybody who studied this understands immediately the
reason behind that, no mistakes about it. Some bishops, monks, patriarchs of the
East- Syrian as well as West- Syrian Church were from Mosul or from the
environs of Mosul, like for example from Eski- Mosul, called in Aramaic
Balad, for instance Patriarch Athanasius II of Balad. And how are this
people sometimes being called? Not by the name “Mosulians”, but by the
name “Assyrians”. And in the Middle-east it is customary to identify a
person by referring to the place of his birth, being used as surname. As
a matter of fact, this is still in use within our nation. How many times
do not we say Yohannon from Bote (Yohannon U’Botoyo), or Isa from Midyat
(Isa, U’Midyoyo), or Afrem from Kafro (Afrem U’Kafroyo), Lahdo from
Arnas (Lahdo U’urnosoyo) etc.. etc..

Patriarch Afrem Barsouwm for
example came from Mosul. And how would he sometimes be called? Yes, good
guess, Afrem Barsauwm the "Assyrian" and not Afrem Barsauwm the "Mosulian."
When he became Patriarch he visited Midyat (Tur Abdin). For this reason
there is a stone above the entrance of St. Smuni Church in Midyat on which
it is written “In the years…. Patriarch Afrem the Assyrian visited …..”

Perhaps it may sound idiotic and
ludicrous, yet the apostate Arameans who call themselves “Assyrians”
utterly misuse this kind of statements/texts to misguide and brainwash
youngsters and "educate" their children with this horrible ideology. In particular
this sort of text has been used to
recruit youngster for terrorism to
show that even some patriarchs call themselves “Assyrians”. And that is
the reason that some of this terrorists use terms like “Assyrians- Suryoye- Chaldeans – Syriac- Aramaeans”. Because the main goal of these
cheaters is to create confusion so that all the names will be accepted.

Another point is, as we were
informed, that some patriarchs and bishops who came from Mosul do not
make secret of their love and pride for Mosul and have written songs/
hymns about it. In their songs/hymns they speak about “Othur” and not
about “Mosul” in reference to their birthplace. For example songs like
“Oh my proud Othur (= Assur), you give birth to so much scholars” are
utterly misused by the apostate Arameans who call themselves “Assyrians”
to brainwash their children and youngsters to show that even their
forefathers are proud of their “Assyrian” origin. And this kind of
foolishness is being accepted like a good tasting cake. In all their
associations, schools and meetings this kind of fallacies is being taught. As a matter
of fact, we are dealing here with a sect.

And that is also exactly the
reason that the famous Patriarch Michael the Great says “The Assyrians
are Syrians”. It is unbelievable how many times this quote of Patriarch
Michael has been misused by the bandits to brainwash the youngster to the
path of the lie.

Strange question: Is there a
relation between “Syrians/Assyrians”? After all the same Michael says “The
kingdoms which have been established in antiquity by our race, (that of)
the Aramaeans, namely the descendants of Aram, who were called Syrians”

The kingdoms of antiquity
established by the Aramean race? How about this? First he says that the
“Assyrians” are “Syrians” and now he says that the kingdoms of antiquity
were established by the Aramean race, that is to say the descendants of
Aram who are called Syrians? How is it possible that this scholar of
exceptional stature, who produced formidable works, contradicts himself?

No, dear reader, we are dealing here
with Mosul and its environs (Orthur in Aramaic), and that is why the
Mosulians, that is to say the Assyrians, are also Syrians.

3.
The Aramean scholars denied.

Not only do the advocates of
this doubtful theory neglect the testimonies of brilliant Aramean
historians, but because they have no access to the Aramean sources (or
deliberately ignore them), they
have no slightest idea on the view of the famous scholars like St. Afrem,
St. Jacob of Sarug, Dionosius of Telmara, Jacob of Edessa, Dionosius
Bar Salibi and many others towards the Greek body of thought of their
era.

Now, what would happen if you
(let we say) for example would go to Jacob of Sarug or Dionosius of
Telmara and would tell them that “the name Syrian you are using was given to
you by the Greeks as abbreviation of Assyrian?”

You may stay assured that
somewhere in their commentaries they would have made a remark about this
event, not to say that they would have devoted a complete and thorough
analyze and would have utterly refuted. Why did they not make
specifically any mention of it? Did not they had interest for the origin
of their people? Did not they want to understand where this name came
from? If indeed Syria would be abbreviation of Assyria, would not they
have said anything about it? The Aramean scholars are renowned and their writings
are being studied worldwide at renowned
universities with respect and amazement. Is it reasonable that these
famous scholars would remain silent?

Probably only a person with
colonial inner urge, having no respect for the true history, will
neglect these esteemed scholars.

4.Cyrusà
Syrusà
Syrians

The Aramean scholars testify
that the word “Syrians” goes back to king Cyrus who ruled over the area
of the present-day Syria in the times of Exodus of the people of Israel,
say around 1500 before Christ. Cyrus gave his name to the area of
ancient Aram and was called after him, thus Syria. Hence the Aramean
people were called Syrians. For example the famous Dionosius Bar Salibi,
the bishop of Diyarbekir/Omid says “Not even the
name "Syrian", which you've taken from us is higher, because this
name is derived from "Suros", who reigned in Antiochia and
after his name the country of Syria was named, like your
national name derived from the pagan ‘Yawan’."

Some of the present-day scholar
claim (they all parrot after each other) however that here is a Greek
mythology involved, for the Greeks “gave” to each people a historical
forefather, in case of Arameans was their forefather king Cyrus, they
say. And according to them, the Aramean scholars simply took over this
myth of the Greeks.

But dear
reader, this is too
simplistic! And again we ask the question: If indeed we are dealing
with a Greek myth, would the Aramean scholars have said nothing about
it, as we previously explained? Just accepting unquestioningly what
the Greeks have told them? Would that be logical to consider? We believe
it is out of the question.

What would happen if the Aramean
scholars knew that the “Greek myth” had a real Aramean origin? Thus, the
Greeks took over from Arameans and produced a story around it?

This resembles by approach to
the proto-revelation of the Old testament on the creation and flood. The
people of Israel, probably Moses, recorded this proto-revelation on
paper, while other nation kept the oral tradition which was transferred
from father to son and in the course of time got modified and remained
in the form of a myth.

Why would the Greeks not have
taken over the “myth”
around Cyrus – which possible was a Aramean reality-
from the Arameans themselves? And how exactly they got that name? Could it be possible that the Greeks took it from the Aramean sources, which later get lost, and the Greek myth survived in a
written form?

And if the Aramean scholars knew
that they had the correct information, but that the Greeks had a
distorted version, they would probably have not given too much
attention to it and simply continued the truth of the history.

To put this in other words: To
the Aramean scholars it was a matter of course. And something which is
self-evident, you do not give too much attention to it. They definitely
did not need the Greeks to understand their origin. On the contrary, most
probably the Greeks have taken from them and recorded in their writings.
Something which is obvious, you do not talk too much about it,
regardless what others say.

The nationalists thought to be clever in using
facile explanations to account for the singular lack of any
consciousness among the Nestorians that they were really the descendants
of Shalmanessar all those years. Clever ain’t bright…it’s just clever.

The gambit of their’s I personally like best is the
“Lost A” to explain that Assyria always existed, but was called Syria
and the people of it “Syrians”. It was lost, we know not why, only to be
“found” when needed. It’s a “deux ex machina”…a device of the gods, come
in handy, just in time, to save the day…and as all such leaves an
unsatisfactory taste behind it.

Why would the “A” get lost in the first place? How
do you misplace the first letter of such an important word? Why lose the
“A” only…why not other letters as well? Why wasn’t the “H” lost in Ebrew?
Why didn’t the “S” get lost in Asanian? Why didn’t the “C” get lost from
Haldean? Why didn’t the Greeks call themselves the Reeks…or call the
Arabians the Rabians…how come that “A” remained? Who lost it? Surely the
first one to leave out the “A” from Assyrian could have been easily
corrected…or fired from his job for being such a clumsy scribe as to
lose letters. And why would everyone else accept this “loss” and go on
making that loss permanent? If the Chinese had occupied the United
States and taken to calling us Amelicans, does it stand to reason that
the people themselves would adopt this usage? Why didn’t “Assyrian pride”
manifest itself, at the least, by retaining its own name for itself?

The Greeks get blamed for this. Their language, it
is claimed, always loses the first “A” in words…but in the words of
every other language they come in contact with? Did they call Adonis “Donis”?
Was Pallas Athena known by her own people as Pallas Thena? That’s a
singular way for this group of people, who are so lauded in every field
of knowledge to behave. But would the descendants of the Assyrians
themselves have adopted this usage…and why? Why did they start referring
to themselves as Suraye instead of maintaining their pride as Ashuraye,
or Atouraye?

And when have there ever been Asuryoyos, that were
rendered Suryoyos, thanks to their original and later lost “A”?

The following quote might be helpful..or it might
be discounted as the work of an “enemy”…an enemy graduated from
Princeton University with a doctorate in Middle Eastern History…an enemy
who taught at a major American college where he was professor Emeritus…an
enemy who’s published books as well as articles…an enemy who’s been
honored by his college and students by having a new International
Studies building named for him…we should be so lucky to have more
enemies like this …….

“The designations Syria
and Syrian were derived from Greek usage long before Christianity. When
the Greeks became better acquainted with the Near East, especially after
Alexander The Great overthrew the Achaemenian empire in the 4th century
B.C., they restricted the name Syria to the lands west of the Euphrates.”

Now why, if Suraye “always” really meant Ashuraye
was only the land of the Arameans, in and around Damascus, called Syria
and remain Syria all these centuries….why didn’t that name also embrace
Mesopotamia, or Iraq rather? It’s odd that the name of the actual
homeland of the Assyrians would lose that designation, while the lands
of the Arameans would keep it, with the “Lost A”.

But Syria and Syrian are the Greek versions, not of
Assyria, but of Aram and Aramean….in the bible, when the Greek
translation was made, the terms Syria and Syrian replaced Aram and
Aramean….but Assyria and Assyrians remained. Why? If they really meant
the same thing why did the bible make a distinction…why was there an
Aram (Syria) side by side with an Assyria? If it was in Greek, and the
Greeks are to be blamed for this usage, why did the Greek bible go on,
with the “A” intact, calling the Assyrians, “Assyrians” and not Syrians…where
in the Greek translation does it call Ashurbanipal a “Syrian” king? Why
was Syrians used only for the people of Aram and later for the Arameans
of geographical Assyria? ……………………………….

………………………………….

Now the
analysis of Professor Dr. John Joseph

After we provided you with some
background information, below we present you the analysis of the most
esteemed professor John Joseph as response to the article of professor
Richard Frye.

By Dr. John Joseph, historian

Professor Richard N. Frye very
appropriately begins his article by saying that “Confusion has existed
between the two similar words ‘Syria’ and ‘Assyria’ throughout history
down to our own day.” His article, unfortunately, perpetuates the
confusion.1 In his concluding remarks, Frye tells us what his
discussion of the usage of “Assyrian/Syrian” has shown. It “shows two facts clearly,”
he writes: First, “Confusion in Western usage between Syria for the
western part of the Fertile Crescent, and Assyria for the ancient land
east of the Euphrates”;
Second, “The Eastern usage, which did not differentiate
between the two except under Western influence or for other external
reasons.” Let us
look at these two findings more closely:

FIRST: WESTERN USAGE OF “SYRIA” AND “ASSYRIA”: There was a time when the West
[the Greeks], not fully familiar with the Near East, did not
differentiate between Syria and Assyria, especially when the Assyrians
were still in power. But as early as the fifth century
B.C., about two centuries after the fall of Nineveh, Herodotus very
clearly differentiated between the two terms and regions.
Randolph Helm’s researches show that Herodotus “conscientiously” and
“consistently”
distinguished the names Syria and Assyria and used them independently of
each other. To
Herodotus, writes Helm, “Syrians” were the inhabitants of the coastal
Levant, including North Syria, Phoenicia, and Philistia; he “never
[emphasis Helm’s] uses the name Syria to apply to Mesopotamia.” To
Herodotus Assyria was in Mesopotamia; he never uses the name Assyria to
apply to Syria. The clear distinction made by Herodotus, comments Helm,
was “lost upon later
Classical authors,
some of whom interpreted [Herodotus’] Histories VII.63 as a
mandate to refer to Phoenicians, Jews, and any other Levantines as
‘Assyrians’.”2 Frye cites the dissertation by Helm without a comment on the subject
of usage of Assyria/Syria as noted above;
on his opening page he even speaks of “the long-accepted statement of
Herodotus (7.63) that the Greeks called Assyrians by the name Syrian
without initial a-.” [sic] On the following page he notes that Herodotus
“may represent a turning point” in the separation of the two terms.

When the Greeks became better acquainted with the Near East, especially
after Alexander the Great overthrew the Achaemenian empire in the 4th
century B.C., and then the Greeks and Romans ruled the region for
centuries, they restricted the name Syria to the lands
west of the Euphrates. During the 3rd
century B.C., when the Hebrew bible was translated into the Greek
Septuagint for the use of the Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, the terms
Aramean and Aramaic of the Hebrew Bible were translated into “Syrian”
and “the Syrian tongue” respectively.3

During the second century B.C., the learned Posidonius, a Greek who had
lived in Syria, wrote that “the people we
[Greeks] call Syrians were called by the Syrians themselves Aramaeans...
for the people in Syria are Aramaeans.”4
Posidonius, who undoubtedly was aware of the confusion that existed in
his day between the terms Assyrian and Syrian, knew well that, whatever
the etymological relationship between the two names, geographical Aram
(Syria), and geographical Assyria were two different geographical,
ethnic, and cultural entities. This point is well expressed by Heinrichs
in his above-noted article; he bluntly speaks of “the constant naive
identification of population groups on the basis of the identity, or
near-identity, of their names; such mistakes,” he adds, “are
omnipresent in the apologetic literature written by historians with no
philological training.”5

In his reference
to Lucian of Samosata, who “calls the people of Syria by the term
Assyrian,” Frye has him saying: “I who wrote (this) am Assyrian” (p.33).
This statement illustrates Helm’s remark that the clear distinction made
by Herodotus--and by others after him--was lost upon some of the later
Classical authors. Oxford scholar Fergus Millar notes this confusion of
‘Syrian’ and ‘Assyrian’ and refers to Lucian, and to Tatian, who also
associated himself with Assyria--saying that he was born “in the land of
the Assyrians,” hence his nickname “Tatian the Assyrian”: Tatian (Greek
Tatianos), writes Millar, no more came from
geographical Assyria “than did that other ‘Assyrian’ with a
Latin name, Lucian (Greek Lucianos) of Samosata.”6

SECOND: EASTERN USAGE OF “SYRIA” AND “ASSYRIA”:
Here the clearly-shown “fact” is
that the two terms were not differentiated from each other “except under
Western influence or for other external reasons.” This does not mean
that there was no confusion in the use of these terms to the east of the
Euphrates also. Because some of the confusion in this discussion is, in
my opinion,
generated by the author
himself, I would like
to note below what I find especially puzzling:

-- The Aramaic language, writes
Frye, “came to be called Syriac in the West or Assyrian in the East”
(p.32).

--While ‘Syriac’ was used in the
West, ‘Assyriac’ was used in the East (p.32).
‘Assyriac’? Here mention is made of “prefixed a-” used in the East,
“especially by the Armenians.”

--We are told that “Asori” in
Armenian refers to “Classical Syriac,” a dialect of Aramaic; but Aramaic,
“called Syrian by the Romans,” is called “Assyrian by the
Armenians,” an obvious misreading of Asori.

What is missing from the above
statement is that in the Armenian language ‘Syrian’ and ‘Assyrian’ both
start with an initial A [the vague “prefixed a-” above], and the two
words are distinguished from each other: Asori, singular, refers to a
‘Syrian’ [Aramean] person
(as in Suraya/Soroyo)--Asoriner is the plural. Syriac language [Aramaic] in
Armenian is Asoreren. The word for ‘Assyrian’ in Armenian is
Asorestants’i.
The names for
geographical Syria and Mesopotamia are also distinct in the Armenian
language and both start with an initial A. Asorik’, wrote
Professor Sanjian in a letter to this writer,
is “the traditional Armenian term for Syria,” and Asorestan “for
Assyria.”7

A
look at Frye’s Table 1, at the end of his article, shows that the
information there does not seem to support his conclusion that Eastern
usage “did not differentiate” between the terms Syrian and Assyrian.
According to the Table, even in the ancient Assyrian dialect of Akkadian,
‘Assyria’ and geographical Syria were rendered by two distinct terms:
Ashur and Arame, respectively.In every one of the eight Near Eastern
languages and dialects of the Table, the names for the “Area of Assyria”
and for the “Area of Syria” are differentiated-- they are
distinctive terms, bearing no resemblance to each other. According to
the Table, the “Area of Assyria” was known in Armenian
as Norshirakan, apparently
a borrowing from the Partheans; ‘Asorestan’ in Armenian refers,
according to the Table, to the “Area of Mesopotamia.”8

In
his effort to prove that the terms Syrian and Assyrian, are synonyms,
Frye cites the 12th century Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church (Jacobite),
Michael the Syrian. The prelate clearly wrote, according to Frye--citing
volume 3 of Michael’s work--that “the inhabitants of the land to
the west of the Euphrates River were properly called Syrians, and by
analogy, all those who speak the same language... both east and west of
the Euphrates to the borders of Persia, are called Syrians” (p.33). Then
Frye cites three cryptic words from Patriarch Michael--this time
referring to volume 1--which are translated into “Assyrians,
i.e., Syrians” (‘twry’d hywn swryy’), and this sole source in
Syriac is presumably yet another proof of “the
continuous equating of the terms ‘Syrian’ and ‘Assyrian’.” By
Athoraye, the renowned Patriarch undoubtedly meant the
inhabitants in and around Mosul. As has been pointed out by many before,
someone with the surname Athoraya means simply that the person hails from the city of Athor,
the name by which the city of Mosul and
its province were known during the pre-Islamic period.
Christians continued to use the geographical designation Athoraya
as a surname, a common practice in the Middle East, where a surname
identifies a person with the name of his birthplace.9

Yet
another example of the interchangeable use of the terms Syrian and
Assyrian--in a variety of combinations: Jacobite Syrian, Eastern
Assyrian, Chaldean, Syrian and Assyrian--comes from the 17th century
writings of the Carmelites in Iran (p.34). This plethora of names came
about not because of the Yet another
example of the interchangeable use of the terms Syrian and Assyrian--in
a variety of combinations: Jacobite Syrian, Eastern Assyrian, Chaldean,
Syrian and Assyrian--comes from the 17th century writings of the
Carmelites in Iran (p.34). This plethora of
names came about not because of the ethnic origin of the various
Eastern Christian communities but because of the geographical location
of their churches or patriarchates. An
expression like “Christians of Assyria” imperceptibly becomes “Assyrian
Christians” and then “Christian Assyrians.”10 As early as the
18th century, the British historian Gibbon was aware of these
confusions. The Nestorians, wrote Gibbon, “Under
the name of Chaldeans or Assyrians, are confounded with the most learned
or the most powerful nation of Eastern antiquity.”11
The various names by which these Aramaic-speaking Christians were known,
and the titles used by the Roman Catholic Church in reference to their
patriarchs--sometimes with such exotic combinations as “Chaldeans of
Assyria,” or “Eastern Chaldeans of Catholic Assyria”--were “hardly ever
used” by the patriarchs or the people themselves, as the late Dominican
scholar Fiey has observed.12

The
above examples, according to Frye, prove that “the assertion by some
that the word ‘Assyrian’ was a creation of Westerners in the eighteenth
or nineteenth century is surely incorrect.” Here Frye cites a single
source and attributes to its author something that the author does not
say. Frye cites p.ix of my book The Nestorians and Their Muslim
Neighbors, where he has me saying: “The name Assyrian did not appear
before the nineteenth century.” What I did write in my Preface was that
the Nestorians “are known also as Assyrians, a name commonly used in
reference to them only since the First World War.” [Italics added.]

The
name Assyrian was certainly used prior to the nineteenth century. Thanks
to the Old Testament, ‘Assyrian’ was a well known name throughout the
centuries and wherever the Bible was held holy, whether in the East or
West. In the works of the early Eastern Christian writers, notes Fiey,
we find all the gamut of references to these ancients, employing
indifferently the words Syrians, Athurians, Chaldeans, and Babylonians,
but these writers never identified with these people. “I
have made indices of my Christian Assyria,” emphasized Fiey, “and
have had to align some 50 pages of proper names of people; there is not
a single writer who has an ‘Assyrian’ name.”13

The
question remains: What does it mean that the terms Assyria and Syria are
Synonyms? Can we substitute the word Assyrian for ‘Syrian’
wherever it is used in antiquity? Can we call the peoples of the various
Aramean principalities in geographical Syria ‘Assyrians’ if ‘Assyria’ is
synonymous with ‘Syria’? In his magnum opus, The Heritage of Persia,
Frye wrote of the omnipresence of the Aramean people:
“All around
the Fertile Crescent from the twelfth century BC Aramaic-speaking nomads
infiltrated and took power, forming small principalities”; one may
conclude, he continues, “that the Aramaeans were well ensconced here [in
Babylon] as they were on the other side of the Syrian desert. Their
movement into the Fertile Crescent resembles that later of the Arab
tribes before Islam into the same territory.” Can we call these Arameans
‘Assyrians’ since the Arameans are called Syrians?

One
may argue that the word Syria is derived from Assyria--and a good case
may be made for that position--but surely that does not transform
geographical Syria and the predominantly Aramean inhabitants of the
Fertile Crescent into Assyrians. If ‘Syria’ is a truncated form of
‘Assyria,’ it simply serves as a reminder
that geographical Syria was once ruled by the
ancient Assyrian empire. If I read Frye’s
impressive The Heritage of Persia correctly, the Assyrian
conquest of the Arameans ended up being suicidal for the Assyrians. “In
Mesopotamia as in Syria,” wrote Frye just over thirty years ago, “the
Aramaeans were subjected to Assyrian aggression and suffered much from
Assyrian rule. In one respect, however, they [the Arameans] conquered
their masters”; the Assyrians were forced to adopt both the
language and script of the Arameans. Then for centuries, we read Frye
say, “Assyrian political expansion” was accompanied by “the
Aramaean ethnic expansion.” The time came when “Even lower
classes, except for peasants in out-of-the-way villages, all over the
the area of modern northern Iraq, knew little or no Assyrian [Akkadian]
but spoke Aramaic.”14

The
Akkadian language, as carrier of ancient Assyrian culture and identity,
had ceased to exist while the Assyrians were still in power. After the
fall of their empire, its Aramaic-speaking population, with no cohesive
force that a central Assyrian government of their own would provide,
gradually became a part of the other groups and nationalities that had
become speakers of the Aramaic tongue. Unlike the Assyrians, the
Persians, who also had adopted Aramaic as an official language, did not
forget their own mother tongue; they maintained their
national-linguistic identity and largely because their Aramaic-speaking
subjects did not predominate from within Persia as they did in Assyria.
(With the advent of Islam, the Persians were able, again, to resist
arabization; they liberally borrowed from the Arabic vocabulary and even
adopted the Arabic script, but they were able to Persianize what they
borrowed.) In the case of the Assyrians, Aramaization was total just as
the absorption of the various other ethnicities would be, centuries
later, through Arabization. The dominance of
Aramaic over Akkadian in both speech and writing was so extensive in the
8th century BC, that Aramaic script came to be mistakenly called
“Assyrian script.”15 A similarity to this would be
to call the Arabic script that the Persians use, “Persian script.” Most
of the contradictions of the article under review, it seems to me, would
have been resolved if, instead of dwelling on the uncertain etymological
relationship of the two names Syria and Assyria, its author had built
upon the interaction between the peoples of geographical Syria
and Assyria, a subject that he had so ably but briefly covered in the
1960s.

When the Aramaic-speaking Christians of the nineteenth century were
calling themselves Syrians (Suraye or Soroyo), in Urmiyah,
Hakkari, and Tur ‘Abdin, they were referring to an ancestry that had
given them their mother tongue and the venerable language of their
liturgy and literature for the previous 1,800 years, the Arameans. There would have been no contraditions if
Professor Frye had used Aramean and Syrian as synonyms,
a usage that started over 2,000 years ago, early during the
Hellenistic period, an era of Near Eastern history that lasted almost a
thousand years. By the time we come to the
Christian era, Frye himself informs us that the “Area of Mesopotamia” was called
“Home of the Arameans”[Bet Aramaye] in Syriac.16

1 Well known Semitic
scholars, such as Yale University’s Franz Rosenthal, the dean of Aramaic
studies in America for over a generation, are of the opinion that
‘Syrian’ and ‘Assyrian’ are of completely different origins even though
it remains for future historians to prove the correctness of the theory.
See Rosenthal’s Die aramäistische Forschung
seit Th. Nöldeke’s Veröffenthlichungen (Leiden,1939), p.3 n.1.
For a concise discussion of this subject see
article by Wolfhart Heinrichs, a colleague of Frye at Harvard
University, entitled “The Modern Assyrians - Name and Nation,” in Festschrift Philologica Constantino Tsereteli Dicta, ed. Silvio
Zaorani (Torino,1993), pp.104-105.

2 See Helm’s
“Herodotus Histories VII.63 and the Geographical Connotations of
the Toponym ‘Assyria’ in the Archaemenid Period” (paper presented at the
190th meeting of the American Oriental Society, at San Francisco, April
1980). See also his “‘Greeks’ in the Neo-Assyrian Levant and ‘Assyria’
in Early Greek Writers” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania,
1980), pp. 27-41; see also Herodotus’ Histories, I.105 and
II.106. The late Arnold J.Toynbee has also clarified that the Syrioi
“are the people whom Herodotus includes in his Fifth Taxation
District” which includes “the whole of Phoenicia and the so-called
Philistine, Syria, together with Cyprus.” The Syrioi, emphasizes
Toynbee, are “not the people of an ‘Assyria’ which contains Babylon and
which is the ninth district in his list.” A Study of History (1954), vol. vii, p. 654 n. 1. See also George Rawlinson,
The History
of Herodotus, ed. Manuel Komroff (New York, 1956), bk. ii, p. 115.

3The Authorized
Version of the Bible continued to use the terms that the Septuagint had
adopted until very recent times (1970), when ‘Aramean’ and ‘Aramaic’ of
the original were used.

7See this writer’s
The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors (Princeton, 1961), p.15
n.53. My information there is corroborated by the late Avedis K. Sanjian,
Narekatsi Professor of Armenian Studies at the University of California,
Los Angeles, in a letter dated October 10, 1994. Consult also Heinrichs,
op. cit., pp. 106-107.

10For
this example, see J.F.Coakley, The Church of the East and the Church
of England, (Oxford, 1992), pp.65-66.

11Edward Gibbon,
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J.B.
Bury (London, 1898), v. 150. See also Joseph, op. cit. p.14.

12For the profusion
of patriarchal titles and names coined by the Roman Catholic Church, see
Fiey’s “‘Assyriens’ ou ‘Araméens’?”, pp.146-150, and his more recent,
posthumously published article, “Comment l’Occident en vint à parler de
‘Chaldéen?’” in Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of
Manchester, 78 (Autumn 1996), pp.163-170.

13See his
“‘Assyriens’ ou ‘Araméens’?”, p.146.

14The Heritage of
Persia,, Mentor Book edition,1966
printing, p.80 and p.32 n.5 of the article.

15See Richard C.
Steiner, “Why the Aramaic Script was called ‘Assyrian’ in Hebrew, Greek,
and Demotic,” in Orientalia (Rome: Pontificium institutum
biblicum), 62 (1993), pp. 80-82; Joseph Naveh and Jonas C. Greenfield,
“Hebrew and Aramaic in the Persian Period,” in Cambridge History of
Judaism (1984), v. 1, pp. 126-127. Compare Frye, article, p.32, and
n.8, where he vaguely speaks of “The use of the term ‘Assyrian’ for the
Aramaic language [sic] and alphabet...” The Greek term Assyria
Grammata and the Hebrew Ktab Ashuri, both mean “Assyrian
script,” or writing; they refer to the Aramaic script that the
Assyrians used, and not to the Aramaic language.

16Table
1, p.35. We are not told what the “Area of Mesopotamia” is called in
Aramaic during the pre-Christian period—undoubtedly Bet Aramaye for a good part of that period.

Do you as a Aramean hate corruption and favoritism? Do you think that this
had caused our nation into Diaspora? Do you want to do something against it?
Are you courageous? Welcome than to Aram-Naharaim

In a letter to the author (John Joseph), dated June 11,
1997, Patricia Crone wrote that she and Cook
“do not argue that the Nestorians of pre-Islamic Iraq saw themselves as
Assyrians or that this is what they called
themselves. They called themselves Suryane, which had no greater
connotation of Assyrian in their usage than it did in anyone else…. We take it for granted that they
got the modern Assyrian label from the West
and proceeded to reinvent themselves…
Of course the Nestorians were Arameans.”

The
deep and hidden reason of the tyrannical oppression practiced throughout the
Middle East is the imposition by France and England of pan-Arabic
nationalist cliques that intend to dictatorially arabize the various peoples
of the Middle East, who are – all – not Arabs

The
basic fact is that all these populations are only Arabic – speaking; they
are not Arabs. Their ethnic historical identity
is Aramaic. Aramaeans are Semitic, but as distant from the
Arabs as the Ancient Hebrews were from the Babylonians. For reasons we are
going to explain, these Aramaean populations got
gradually arabized, but the arabization phenomenon took place
at the linguistic level only, not at the ethnic,
national, cultural levels

Out
of it, colonial missionaries, political agents, and diplomats
made a huge
lie (namely that these Aramaeans are not Aramaeans but 'Assyrians') with
which they disconnected the Nestorian Aramaeans from their Aramaic identity

What
is the correct national name of the Modern Aramaeans? Why are there Aramaeans, who despite the fact that they speak Aramaic, insist on calling
themselves 'Assyrians'? Why other Aramaeans stick to a third name, 'Chaldaeans'?
Is it proper to use the name 'Syriac' that usually describes a late form of
Aramaic language and scripture (from which Arabic derived) as national name
of the Aramaeans?

Contrarily
to the farfetched – and well financed – inaccuracies of Simo Parpola, there
is not a single element in the defunct before 2600 years Assyrian Cultural
and National Heritage to resemble in anything with the genuinely Aramaean
culture of today’s Aramaeans, irrespective of the appellation that they use
to designate themselves, Aramaeans, Chaldaeans, Assyrians or
Zulu.............

But
this claim has been researched by historians, and concluded that people in
middle East mostly refer to people to their region, like someone from
Kirkuk, was named Kirkuki whether he was , Kurd, Turkmen or Aramean. So is
the case with Assyrians or actually the “Athuris” that is how they are
called in the region. That name is been used to
label the Nestorian Arameans of Athur(Asur) region at the suburbs of Mosul.
The term has no
any relation with the ancient Assyrians and the modern Assyrians

As
for the terms "Assyrians"
and "Chaldaeans,"
which are used to describe non-Arab Christians (other than Armenians), there
is absolutely no historical reference of their association with the
Assyrians and Chaldaeans of ancient Mesopotamia

“The Church of the East and the
Church of England: A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian
Mission “ is the title of the book written by J.F. Coakley and
published in 1992.

On page 147 Coackly reports about a dispute between Arthur Maclean,
head of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission from 1886 to 1891,
and Hormuzed Rassam, the brother of Christian Antun (Isa) Rassam; a Chaldean
family from Mosul. We read:
“As he (Maclean) insisted, the ‘Syrians’ called
themselves that, never ‘Assyrians’; …… to apply the name
‘Assyrians’ to these Eastern Syrian Christians
appears to me either an error, or else pedantry. There is really
as far as I know no proof that they had any
connection with the Old Assyrians. ....... ..... Why should
we invent a name when we have
such a very convenient one, used for centuries, at
our hand? I can understand that one living close to the ruins of
Nineve should have a fit enthusiasm of Old Assyria; but is it common sense to cast aside a name
used by the people themselves, and to
invent another for them of very doubtful applicability?“